Rose leaned over—she and Mr. Peregrine were behind them, with the Roths—and tapped her daughter’s shoulder. “What in the devil is that?” she asked.
“I don’t know, mom,” Sadie intoned.
“You don’t bring a child to a funeral,” said Rose, in a clipped tone. “What is that girl thinking?”
Sadie shrugged.
“I hope she’s going to take him out if he starts crying.”
“I’m sure she will,” said Ed, patting Rose’s hand.
Rose made a noise, something between a grunt and a snort, and settled back in her seat. Caitlin was still standing, ostensibly looking for a seat. Many eyes had turned to her, including those of the rabbi. “This is just like her,” Emily whispered.
“I know,” said Sadie, instantly regretting it. But soon Caitlin had seated herself next to George Wadsworth—Sadie remembering how she’d spoken so disparagingly of him all those years back—forcing everyone in the row to slide down, and making a big show of untying Ismael from his red baby sack.
“Sadie, I think we should get started,” said Rose, leaning over Sadie’s shoulder.
“Okay,” snapped Sadie, and slipped out of her seat.
From the bima, she could see that the chapel was, indeed, nearly full. The flowers drooped heavily in their vases, emitting a pale, vegetal scent, and the skies had cleared, sun slanting through the high stained-glass windows, sending slats of light across the heads of those gathered and along the stone floor. “Thank you all for coming,” she said into the small, silver microphone. Her voice reverberated around the room, shocking her, briefly, into silence. What am I doing, she thought. I should have practiced. I should have written something out. But then she surveyed the rows of stunned faces, all looking to her, if just for a moment, for relief, for answers, for comfort. And she found herself speaking of meeting Lil during freshman orientation: she had been walking through the lobby of Talcott, unsure of which parlor (north or south?) her “rap group” was meeting in, when a voice called down to her, asking, “Hey, do you know Stephie Eichel?” Startled, she looked up and saw Lil, whose dark hair then hung nearly down to her waist, in a black crepe dress from the 1940s, shortened to midthigh, and a pair of cherry red Doc Martens. (The Oberlin folk tittered at this description, as she’d known they would, for this was how they’d all looked then.)
“She’s my best friend,” Sadie told her. “How do you know Steph? You’re from New York? Have we met?”
“Not exactly,” Lil had said. “Steph was my roommate at Bennington last summer. She had a photo of you above her desk.” Then she gave Sadie a huge smile. “I walked by you every time I went to the bathroom.” The crowd dissolved, too readily, into laughter. They could all, Sadie knew, hear Lil saying those words, or something like them. And she had, of course, told this story for exactly this reason, to lighten things up, as Rose had instructed her to, but as the noise—a guffaw, a small clap, a series of whispers—grew to fill the room, a surge of anger shot through Sadie, and she found herself on the verge of shouting Shut up, shut up, shut up, it’s not funny, none of this is funny. “But that was the sort of person Lil was,” she heard herself say, her mouth slumping too close to the microphone. “It doesn’t at all feel right to say was—” Her voice was cracking now, her fingers twitchy with adrenaline, but she barreled on. “When she loved people—and she loved so many people, so fiercely—she memorized everything about them, even the snapshots they pinned to the wall. She remembered every piece of clothing you wore, every meal you ate, every word you ever said. Her friends were so important to her. Lillian was a true extrovert, in the best sense of the term: she needed people to invigorate and inspire and challenge her. And she, in turn, invigorated and inspired and challenged everyone she knew.”
She had diverged from her plan, her plan to keep things calm and brief, to avoid lionizing Lil in death, to not indulge in sleek exegesis on Lil’s life; she had diverged from the notes she’d scrawled early that morning on the blank sides of a pile of yellowed index cards, relics of Aunt Minnie, and she stared, then, blankly, at the crowd gathered before her, unsure of where to go from there. And then it occurred to her that it was okay, that her friend, her dear friend, had died and she needn’t maintain her composure so completely, needn’t pretend that she’d memorized a perfect, glib speech. “Excuse me,” she said, and pressed her hands, which were cold, to her hot eyes for a moment, stopping herself from moaning with relief. How nice, she thought, it would be if she could simply stay in this pose until it was all over, until Lil was in the ground, six feet of dirt mounded on top of her. How nice it would be if she could just sit down right then, right up there, on the bima. She was so tired, so very tired.
“Is she okay?” she heard Rose whisper, too loudly, of course. I’m fine, she snapped silently, and arranged her face into a practiced smile. When she dropped her hands, the first thing she saw was Tuck—standing at the back of the room, his thick hands messily shoved into the pockets of his gray pants, a satiric smile on his face. How much of her little speech had he heard? Suddenly, her girlish remembrances seemed foolish and sentimental—like set pieces from a movie—and her assessments of Lil like the aphorisms you read on an herbal tea bag (“True friends inspire and challenge you”). Why had he come? They had tried to make everything so nice, to make everything just as Lil would have wanted it, and he had come and ruined everything.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, her voice sounding choked and far away, and made her way, shakily, back to her seat between Ed and Emily. Jumpily, she listened as Dave played his song (spare and beautiful; how Lil would have loved, in life, to have him write a song for her) and Beth read a Millay poem. Would Tuck realize the impropriety of his attendance? No. Each time she darted her head toward the back, there he stood, slouched against the wall, like a man in pain, burying his broad, angular cheeks in his hands, as if a particular phrase or reminiscence had moved him beyond control, a pantomime of a grieving man. “Why is he here?” she whispered to Ed, as Emily made her way up to the bima.
“He loved her,” he whispered back. “He did, Sadie. Don’t be so hard on him.” He pulled his hands from hers.
“He didn’t,” she said, too loudly. But then she remembered their wedding—the rustle and shadow of Lil’s parchment-colored gown as she’d walked over these stone floors, the vast, greedy grin on Tuck’s face, the vows they’d made to each other, in their clear, young voices. He did, she thought, almost against her will. For this made it all more difficult to understand. Had he stopped? Why? She wanted it to be one way or the other: he had never loved her or he loved her still and everything bad that happened had been some sort of mix-up or misunderstanding, as in Shakespeare or Austen.
Emily spoke with a smile and a twinkle, telling of the escapades she and Lil had embarked on during their single days. Lil, she said, had an “inability to compromise—when she wanted something she wanted it.” And it was this fierce engagement with the world that made her, “at times, a pain in the ass. She was the person who would tell you if your new haircut was all wrong or if your boyfriend was a jerk—but also the most deliriously fun person to be around. She could make going out for a cup of coffee seem like a big adventure.”
This was all Sadie had planned—because she’d not known whether Tal was coming, she’d not factored him in—but when Emily stepped down, George Wadsworth jumped up—“May I have the floor, please?”—and spoke, in his neat, clipped way, of Lil’s intellectual curiosity; and then Lil’s young cousins, giggling with discomfort; and a sweet aunt, with Lil’s large eyes and dark hair; and Heidi Kass from Columbia; and Lil’s boss from the poetry organization; and Lil’s freshman-year roommate, Robin something, an elfin creature with a smooth cap of black hair, who taught school in Ohio. The group had forgotten about her—though she and Lil had stayed friends until the end—and felt terrible when she began sobbing midway through her words. How thoughtless of them not to include her in the planning—not to make sure she had a place
to stay in the city. On and on they came; just when it seemed there was nothing more to say, someone else stepped forward. Meredith Weiss, a young poet, a Columbia classmate, and finally, to Sadie’s shock, Rose Peregrine gingerly made her way to the aisle and took hold of the microphone.
“I’ve always said that Sadie, my daughter, has the most marvelous friends,” she began, in what Sadie liked to think of as her Katharine Hepburn voice, with the exaggerated emphasis on verbs, the hard i’s and r’s and a’s. Sadie had never heard her say any such thing, but, strangely, rather than her feeling annoyed, the tears she’d fought off earlier rushed into her eyes, sending a hot flash of pain across her brow. “As some of you know, I was always particularly partial to Lillian,” she went on, with a grand smile. “Sadie and Lillian became friends really as soon as they arrived at school and their freshman year Lil came to our house for Thanksgiving. It was immediately clear that Lillian was a special girl, marked for a glorious future. She was a person who listened during conversation, who truly wanted to know about others’ experiences, who wanted to learn. Over the years, she spent many weekends at our house and we had many remarkable conversations. Mr. Peregrine and I have always regarded her as a second daughter, of sorts, and we tried to take care of her, as parents would, because her own parents were so far away.” Here she smiled, grandiloquently, at the Roths. “But I fear we didn’t do a good enough job.” She paused and Sadie thought, for a moment, that her mother might loose a few tears herself. But instead Rose’s voice hardened and she moved to a different subject. “We were thrilled when Lillian moved to New York. Not just because we were fond of her and glad that Sadie would have a good friend in the city—though all of that was true—but because it was rare to meet a person who loved New York more than Lillian. It was impossible to imagine her living anywhere else.” Behind Sadie, Dr. Roth issued a wet cough. “And for an old lady like me—I was born in Brooklyn, you know—it was positively thrilling to watch Lillian discovering New York for the first time. It makes you see everything anew. I miss her so much.”
Rose seemed to have worked out a plan with Mrs. Roth, without having notified the girls. She gave the woman a nod as she finished and Mrs. Roth slowly made her way to the front of the room, propelling her tiny frame forward with great difficulty, like a character in a dream who finds the air around her suddenly turned to Jell-O or chocolate pudding. Was she drugged? Sadie wondered. Probably. Her black suit was a near replica of Rose Peregrine’s navy one and Sadie, for a moment, wondered if her mother had taken Mrs. Roth to Bergdorf’s on Saturday. On either side of Sadie, Beth and Emily emitted small sounds of distress. “I want to thank you all,” Mrs. Roth said, her voice thick and low. “You loved her. And she loved all of you. I’ve never seen a girl who loved her friends so much.” And then she collapsed, sobbing. “Oh God,” Beth whispered. “Oh God.” And Sadie jumped up and embraced the woman. Together, she and Rose guided her downstairs, sat her at a table with a glass of white wine and a bagel, and held her thin hands together, in silence. “I wanted to have another,” she told them finally. “But we couldn’t.” With a shudder, she dropped her wet face into her hands. “Yes,” murmured Rose, inexplicably, rubbing the woman’s thin back. From the hallway, Sadie heard the faint sounds of footsteps, the low thrum of voices.
“We’d like you to come,” Mrs. Roth said finally. “To the funeral. Please. All of you. I don’t know what Barry was thinking.”
“Oh,” said Sadie, feeling herself on the verge of tears. “Thank you.” She swallowed the wetness that had gathered in her throat. “We loved her.”
“Barry’s ordered cars,” said Mrs. Roth, pulling a compact out of her bag and staring at it uncomprehendingly. “There’s room.”
“Okay,” said Rose. “Let’s have a little drink now.”
A moment later, they were invaded. All around them, people talked and, strangely, laughed in little groups, their hands obscured by bagels striped pink by salmon. Dave stood with Meredith Weiss and her husband, the two men making movements with their hands, as if playing a guitar. The husbands—Ed, Josh, and Will—sat together at a small table drinking what appeared to be—but could not be, since Sadie and Rose had not provided it—scotch, the Slikowskers gathered around them like groupies. At a large table, the Roths talked loudly with each other, while Sadie’s parents nodded and sipped glasses of white wine. At another, Dave’s parents flipped through a yellowing Hebrew songbook, singing snatches of tunes Sadie remembered from camp. Curtis Lang and his bunch positioned themselves by the bar—of course, Sadie thought—as did the band guys from the wedding and their respective spouses, and Rob Green-Gold and his girl. The bartender they’d hired to pour wine and Calistoga water, a tall kid with spiky hair, appeared a bit stagestruck.
Beth and Emily stood, in silence, by the tray of bagels, scanning the crowd. Eventually, Sadie left Elaine Roth in the care of her husband and made her way over to them. “I was just going to talk to George Wadsworth,” said Beth.
“Okay,” said Sadie, through what felt like a layer of cotton wool. It was hot in the room, way too hot, and her breasts, she was realizing too late, were quickly becoming engorged, hard as rocks and painful at the tips. This was the longest she’d left Mina, more than four hours, and she had, she calculated, missed two feedings, before and after Mina’s morning nap. She’d brought her hand pump in her bag. Or—oh no—she hadn’t. Had she? She’d left it out—she could see on the kitchen table, freshly sterilized, in a Ziploc bag—but had she actually grabbed it on the way out? “I’m going to go wash my face,” she told Emily. “Will you be okay?”
“Sure,” said Emily. Sadie could tell she didn’t want to be abandoned, but she slid off anyway, past clusters of Roths in animated discussion, to the little cabinet in the north corner, in which she’d stashed her bag. The room, she thought, was growing hotter and hotter. Why had she worn wool, wool that was now stretching uncomfortably over her breasts? Hadn’t she attended a thousand oversubscribed luncheons in this very room, with its nonfunctioning windows? “Excuse me,” she said to a man’s gray flannel back. But instead of allowing her to pass, he turned and handed her a glass of wine. Tuck. “Sadie Peregrine,” he said. “I was just coming to find you. Thought you might need a drink.”
“Oh,” said Sadie, dumbly. Her breasts, now, were pricking. In a moment, she knew, she’d begin to leak. She had not—what was wrong with her?—worn pads. They’d ruined the line of her dress.
“I loved what you said about Lil,” said Tuck, his voice ragged and cracking. “You planned all this? You and your mother?”
Sadie compressed her lips into a thin line, an expression her mother had told her, time and again, was unattractive. “Actually, we all planned it together,” she told him truthfully.
“Oh, right,” he replied, nodding his broad head. “The group.” He took a long sip of wine and raised his eyebrows at her. He hadn’t, she saw, even bothered to shave.
“We tried to figure out what Lil would have wanted,” she added, feeling herself somehow—why? why?—becoming the person he thought her to be: girlish, silly, false. She gulped down her wine, as if it were water, for she was thirsty, suddenly, unbearably thirsty.
“That’s really nice of you,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, then stopped and closed her eyes. Why would he not go away? What was she sorry for? He looked at her, guilelessly, for the first time in—how long? Years? Ever? It had been at least a year since she’d last seen him, probably more, and the lines that ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth had deepened, exaggerating the hard slant of his cheekbones, and lending his face a peculiar plasticity, as if he were not human but a marionette. His mouth went slack, in expectation of kindness, and Sadie found herself reaching up and embracing him. For a moment, he stiffened and then, with a small sob, he wrapped his arms around her and dropped his head to the top of hers. He was hot, too, and he smelled of sweat and tobacco and alcohol, though not unpleasantly so, and she wanted to tell him it
was okay, everything was all right, it wasn’t his fault, none of this was his fault, and if it was his fault, then it was hers, too, for she could have fought harder for him, for his book, though that wasn’t really the point, the point was that she had abandoned Lil, too—so wonderful, but so exhausting, and Sadie had grown so tired, had felt that she didn’t have time for difficulty anymore, not once Jack came, and the world changed, and she was so depleted and afraid—and they were two of a kind, in a way, weren’t they, now? And she was sorry, she was, she was so sorry. But before she could say a word, there it was, yes, the hot, prickling spurt of milk, soaking the slick fabric of her bra and the rougher one of her dress—hopefully not Tuck’s suit—and cooling immediately, a sensation she loathed. She pulled away from his embrace and folded her arms across her chest to hide the stains. “I’m afraid,” she said hoarsely, “I have to make my way to the ladies’ room.” He looked directly, disconcertingly, into her eyes, as if daring her to leave. What was it? What did he want from her? She could not say what he perhaps wanted her to say. A moment ago, in his arms, she had thought she could absolve him. But now her empathy had disappeared. Her mind had gone blank. “I—” she said. “I was wondering, do you have the time?” Still, he stared at her, his face strangely immobile, and she thought that he might kiss her, for he looked, rather literally, like a drowning man, battered by waves and wind, scouting for a lifeboat. He held up his wrist to her. “Thanks,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me,” and she turned on her heel and galloped up the stairs, sloshing wine out of her plastic cup with each step, soothed by the efficient click of her heels on the stone steps, a sound she’d relished in childhood, when she’d sat in the synagogue’s coatroom reading novels, the edges of minks and sables tickling her arms, listening to the distant voices and music from the bar mitzvahs or weddings or fund-raisers at which her parents danced.
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